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E. L. Norfolk, of Salem, Mass., has taken measures to secure a patent for various improvements in machinery for dressing flax. To effect the operation of separating, cleaning, and drawing out the fibres, the inventor uses one or more toothed cylinders, similar to the breaking or heckling cylinders used in flax mills. They are placed singly between a pair of feeding and a pair of drawing rollers and are made to revolve at a greater speed than the former ; they are, moreover, so arranged that their teeth will draw the fibres forward in the direction of these same feed rollers. It is possible to employ this combination of cylinders and rollers so multiplied and arranged that " doubling " may be performed repeatedly in the same machine, and the operations of drawing and heckling practiced after every doubling. The mechanism employed effects the various requisite processes with an extraordinary degree of perfection and rapidity, especially by separating the feed which supplies the machine in the first instance, and then by drawing and afterwards doubling repeatedly. The " sliver" thus produced is comparatively uniform as to thickness, but to make it more perfect, it is necessary to equalize as much as possible the teed from each set of rollers, which end is attained by attaching a trunk to each set, which is placed in close proximity before the rollers, and open at the back and front, to allow a free passage to the flax. A movable mouth-piece is attached to each trunk, and the whole is so arranged that any increase or decrease in the quantity of feed will cause an inversely corresponding decrease or increase in the distance of the said movements.
